]]>6870Awkward lunchtime conversationshttp://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/awkward-lunchtime-conversations/6864/
http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/awkward-lunchtime-conversations/6864/#commentsWed, 29 Jan 2014 13:00:49 +0000http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/?p=6864I was eating at a fine upscale establishment 5 Guys Burgers & Fries recently. In case you’ve never been, the appeal is that they charge you more for french fries than most places, then toss a handful of extra fries in the bag before they give it to you in order to give you the delusion that you’re getting extra for your money. First, a tip: If you’re there with someone else (I do this with my wife). Order completely separately. Why? Because they put the same amount of fries at the bottom of the bag regardless if you’re ordering multiple amounts of fries, or just a single order. #WorkTheSystem

Anyway, it’s one of those places that when you order, they give you a number, you go and sit down, and wait for your number to be called. I ordered, I got my number, and I sat down (wow, you feel that? That’s called anticipation. Am I building a story here or what? Spoiler: Or What). When I sat down, an employee stopped by my table. Little did I know, we were about to engage in some of the most awkward conversation I’ve been a part of in some time.

Her: Can I get you anything?

Me: No, I’m good, thank you.

Her: Are you sure? Anything? Napkins?

… Nakpins?

Look, I know I’m a grubby dude. If you ran into me on the street, your first instinct would probably be to go out of your way to not talk to me, cause that cup in my hand is probably full of change from the other people that walked by. Actually, it’s probably empty. Cause I’m dressed too nice to by panhandling. But just barely too nice. Like, my Slayer t-shirt doesn’t have any holes in it (…and I call myself a REAL fan?).

But come on. Napkins? I didn’t even have any food in front of me! If I had been sitting there for a while, and you notice I have some cheese in my beard (hey, it’s a big beard… it’s so big, soup and I are no longer friends), FINE, offer me a napkin then. I’ll assume that I got something somewhere, and dab the heck out of my face. But when I don’t have any food there, I believe the conversation could also have been equal to this:

Her: On my god, what happened to your face?

Me: What? What’re you talking about?

Her: Would you like a Lucha Libre mask or something to cover that thing up? And by thing… You know… face?

Me: How insulting! I will never eat here agai… wait, is the mask free?

Her: ? No. $20.

Me: ok. I’ll take two.

So… As you can see… Ummmm… Well… I guess this one kinda got away from me. Maybe I can weave a final moral statement in here or something. Let’s see what I got, from the first moral I found when looking up morals on Google:

]]>http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/awkward-lunchtime-conversations/6864/feed/26864New Year’s Resolutionshttp://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/new-years-resolutions/6836/
Mon, 13 Jan 2014 13:22:03 +0000http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/?p=6836Well, I know it’s the 11th of the month already, but I thought I’d put my New Year’s Resolutions out there in writing for people to see. So… without further ado:

Deric’s 2014 New Year’s Resolutions

Produce one blog post every day, starting on Jan 1…

Wait… That can’t be right. Today’s the 13th already, and this is my first post of the year? Eh, screw it then… Wake me up in 2015.

-Deric
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Deric Harrington is a comedian from the Albany area. He specializes in short blog posts, apparently.

]]>6836The worst of Albany – Craigslisthttp://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/the-worst-of-albany-craigslist/6777/
Thu, 12 Dec 2013 12:00:32 +0000http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/?p=6777I’ve recently realized that if you want to see the worst an area has, look at the listings for “free stuff” on Craigslist. These are the items that someone has decided that charging even a dollar is just too much.

These were both “Free” items offered by Price Chopper. We don’t use catsup and don’t like Toaster Streudals – – but I figured someone could use them so took them. Unopened and waiting for you – – – – The bottle of cathttp://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/wp-admin/tools.phpsup is a large bottle and the streudals are frozen.

Well, I wasn’t going to go out of my way for this, but if the catsup (and I hate it when people spell it that way) is a large bottle, then it’s probably worth the trip to Saratoga for it. Hmmmm… you know, if Saratoga changed their city slogan… “Saratoga: Come for a free Toaster Streudal (it’s frozen), stay for the horse racing (they’re not frozen)”. I mean, I’m amazed it took this long for Saratoga to realize they had something so simple in order to get people there when track season is over. Also, they said they don’t use catsup, so I assume they’re the devil in the flesh. HERETIC!

Wait a second… only 5 posts under that is someone selling a toaster oven in Schenectady. It’s only going to cost $20 in gas, but by the end of it, you could totally have a cooked toaster strudel. Man, I should really be changing this post from a comedy post to the Shoppertunist page instead…

Here’s one of the best:Gore-tex jacket, w’s small, missing right arm – missing… right… arm. Let that sink in for a second. The jacket is missing it’s right arm. And they thought they would help out, by offering it to anyone that needs a one-armed jacket. This is one of the few listings where it probably wasn’t worth the person’s time to write the post… especially if the person only has one arm, cause it likely took them extra long to type it.

This next one is the title, followed by the entire text of the post:Baby items – Have some baby items
And that’s it. That could mean month old open forumla, that could mean a crib, that could mean a black market baby… We don’t know.

So… Why draw attention to these Craigslist posts? Simple. Christmas is coming, and I haven’t bought anyone anything yet. Here’s to hoping someone I know that’s a women’s small loses an arm in the next week, cause damn, I found the perfect thing.

-Deric

]]>6777Breaking down Frostyhttp://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/breaking-down-frosty/6774/
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 11:00:08 +0000http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/?p=6774I was listening to Christmas music recently, because… well… you have no choice this time of year. Frosty started playing. I can’t get past one thing here…

“There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found”

Here’s the issue. Not only do we generally dismiss the entire idea that the hat contains magic that Harry Potter would have killed Hermione to get his hands on, but we do it without thinking “hey, you know… If we animated a snowman by putting the hat on it… What other kind of clearly non-Christian spell-casting can we do with it?”

The first and most obvious: Attempt to pull a rabbit out of it. Granted, this is a step down from “animate the inanimate object” done so casually in the song. But, well, you gotta do the classics. It’s sort of the same reasoning behind why the band Kiss has to play Rock N’ Roll All Nite. Now, I’m not saying the band Kiss is magic. But I’m also not saying they’re not magic. I mean, how many other bands can play mostly songs about their wieners for over 30 years? That’s more wiener than:

And that’s a lot of wiener.

From there, I think the next thing we do? Try to animate just about everything. If it worked for a snowman, maybe it’ll work for this mailbox (side note: “Mikey the Mailbox was a very stationary soul (cause he has no legs)” is far less catchy than the Frosty tune we all know and love). The geek in me of course wants to toss the hat on a Prius, to see if fuel-efficient Transformers can be made…

No one even questions where the hat came from? If it’s enchanted… Is that the person you want to make mad when they find out you’ve not only stolen their magic hat, but you’ve put it in the snow. Seriously, that hat is so soaked through now, the magic the owner will perform if (s)he gets it back is magically changing from a healthy person to one that suffers from pneumonia (side note: Merlin the Pneumonia Sufferer? A wonderful song. Makes people cry more than the Christmas shoes.) If they can get through the wet hat issue, I’m guessing they’re going to have no problem just casting a spell insta-killing all the little juvenile delinquents that have no issue stealing a powerful wizard’s hat.

Sooo… ummmmmm… Merry Christmas?

-Deric

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Deric Harrington is a comedian from the Albany area. He might have read too much into the song.

]]>67742AM isn’t what it used to be…http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/2am-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/6772/
Tue, 10 Dec 2013 11:00:23 +0000http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/?p=6772It’s 2AM as I write this, and I have just put my baby down (ummmm… that doesn’t sound right. I put her to sleep? Nope, that also sounds like I may have killed her… Hmmmm…) I have just gently placed my baby lovingly into her bassinet for the night (watch, “gently placed my baby lovingly into her bassinet” is going to be the title to the next big song about murder), and I thought I’d cross my fingers, and write a little something here.

While I was pacing around with her, hoping she would close her eyes, I got to thinking about college, and all the times I stayed up until 2AM there. It wasn’t a big thing, it was just a part of the weekend… or for any real reason on a weekday. But since entering the “real world” (I’m going to divert here for an aside: In college, all the talk was about how “in the real world, X would be different, or Y would be different”. What I’ve learned in life is the real world is what you make of it. There are people that never enter it as you or I know it. We refer to these people as jerk-heads.) staying up until 2 means there’s a disturbance in the force as we know it. It means I can’t fall asleep after I spent New Year’s Eve partying it up (side note: I don’t know if I’ve ever “partied it up”).

From there, I got to thinking about a local pizza establishment to my college. They had some of the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life. My friends and I would make a Tuesday trek to there every week, in order to grab a couple of slices. It was a little sobering to hear a couple years ago that the owner/head pizza guy killed himself. The really strange part? Every single person I told about that to said the same thing. They all said “oh no, that’s terrible (short pause) Are they still open? You wanna go get a slice?” That’s how you know pizza is good. If you hear the person that made it is dead, and all you can think about is “if they shut down before that last slice, I’m going to be pissed”. That’s how you also know that most of my friends are shallow

So, here I am, 2:20 on a Monday night, just sitting at the keyboard, typing away. Sometimes a little insomnia is a good thing… We can get done the things we want to, but just don’t need that pesty daylight in order to get it done… Things like mowing the lawn.

That’s how you know I’m a turd.

-Deric
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Deric Harrington is a comedian from the Albany area. If he dies, please, have a slice. Not of pizza, but a can of that orange soda, Slice.

]]>6772Baby clothes and other lieshttp://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/baby-clothes-and-other-lies/6737/
http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/baby-clothes-and-other-lies/6737/#commentsThu, 21 Nov 2013 13:00:51 +0000http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/?p=6737Hey there everyone. It’s been a little while since I’ve posted, but I’m looking to get back on the horse a bit, so let’s see where this takes us, ok?

First off, I haven’t posted much, because of becoming a daddy. Life takes priority over the blog for me. With that said, there’s something that falls under both being a dad, and the comedy blog.

I was at Baby’s R Us today, looking for Playstation 4’s something for my baby, when I came across the “Seasonal Clothing”… The clothes the baby will wear once ever, and that’s it. Currently in vogue? “Baby’s first Thanksgiving”, and “Baby’s first Christmas” stuff. I gotta admit, it’s difficult for me not to want to buy any of it, because I (like everyone else ever) has the cutest baby, and the world needs to know that.

However, what really caught my eye wasn’t the clothing itself, but the horrible lies perpetuated within said clothing. You see, I took a quick look for my daughter’s size… No newborn sizes at first glance. That’s ok, I’ll keep looking… Here’s the sizes I saw.

3-6 months
6-9 months
9-12 months
12-18 months

See anything wrong with that list? I do… Let’s focus on the last one. 12-18 months.

If your baby is 12-18 months old, it is physically impossible for that holiday to be “baby’s first”. Unless there’s a calendar for baby’s that’s different than ours (Mayans, I’m looking at you). And if you’re buying that clothing for your baby after they’re a year old… You’re establishing at a dangerously early age, that your baby is an attention whore… Like their parents (Editor: Yeah, not like a guy that blogs, right? He doesn’t care about public opinion, RIGHT?!)

And since I’m talking about things that are just marketed incorrectly, let me move on to Rite-Aid. Rite-Aid currently has a loyalty card like every other company out there (I’m waiting for Andy Rooney to have a segment where he goes “I remember a time when my keychain was only used for keys. Now it looks like a commercial segment of 60 minutes, filled with logos and gimmicks for what the actual price should be”).

However, the Rite Aid card is called Rite Aid Wellness+ (the plus lets you know that you’re not just getting wellness, you’re getting WELLNESS PLUS! Take that all you plain wellness cards out there). That’s dumb in and of itself. But what was really dumb… was this:

That’s right, now I can save money on candy with my wellness+ card! I guess that answers what the plus means. It’s Wellness Plus the exact opposite of Wellness! That’s like my Planet Fitness card also getting my unlimited kicks in the balls. What? That doesn’t seem like it’s good for your fitness. Exactly. (although, to be honest, I don’t know if the pros of being kicked in the balls has been accurately measured, for no one being willing to be part of that experiment. On the flip side, there is an abundance of ladies signed up to do the kicking…)

-Deric
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Deric Harrington is a comedian from the Albany Area. He likes animals, such as seals, when he sells solar panels at 50% off.

So, you can imagine the kind of giddy-ness not seen since Beatlemania took the world by storm (hopefully I won’t be let down like when the Beatles Rock Band took my X-Box by disappointment), when I read that Monty Python will be reuniting for live shows!. An announcement about the forthcoming reunion happens this Thursday (with a live stream of the announcement available as well).

First, let’s start with a little background: If you don’t know Monty Python, Get out of my blogspace. Seriously. How can you read something called a comedy blog with absolutely no knowledge of Monty Python? I would describe Monty Python as the perfectly nerdy comedy group that has guaranteed a whole generation of people that quote their sketches will have difficulty ever getting laid. In all honesty, if you don’t know who they are, YouTube is your friend. I would consider them the fathers of absurdest sketch movement. There’s a direct line from the old Monty Python’s Flying Circus straight to current day Family Guy. The signature is all over it.

To the regular world? Monty Python is the reason Spamalot was a thing. It was basically a musical tribute to Monty Python’s movies “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Monty Python’s Life Of Brian” (Spamalot was written and staged by Python member Eric Idle).

To me, the big questions are this: Where and how much? My completely uneducated guess is: New York City, and a lot. You know, they’ve had such an influence on my life, I’m going to do everything in my power to go watch the show… While it would be nice to pretend they’re going to do such an extensive tour that they would come up to Albany, the realism of that thought fails to exist. I’m guessing this will be a major city tour only (sorry Albany, sorry Worcester).

There’s very rarely an event in my life where I go “I don’t care, just take my money”… But this is it.

]]>http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/monty-python-reunites/6741/feed/16741My first real “show” – The Comedy Workshttp://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/my-first-real-show-the-comedy-works/6721/
Fri, 08 Nov 2013 13:00:28 +0000http://blog.timesunion.com/comedy/?p=6721Hey there everyone. Seeing as how I’m performing at the Comedy Works all this weekend (7:30 & 9:30 on Friday and Saturday), I thought I would talk about my first real spot on a show, as it happened to also be at the Comedy Works. Granted, it was back when it was in a hotel in Glenmont, NY (it has been in 4 different locations since that time) But still.

The background for this story is important as well. I had started doing comedy roughly two to three weeks before this. One of my friends (who I have since lost contact with) said to me, “you gotta go do the Comedy Works, they’ll let you do some time on one of their regular shows”. See, as a comic, you can do all the open mics you want to, you can hone your craft there, but I personally don’t think you’re truly doing comedy, until people that have paid their hard-earned money sit down, and someone introduces you as the person that will be entertaining them for the next chunk of time.

So, I went to the Comedy Works with my friend. He introduced me to the owner of the club (how long ago was this? His son runs it now…), who said no problem, I could have 5 minutes on stage. This would likely prove to be 5 of the longest minutes in time. Not for me… For the poor audience that had to watch this guy struggle through the beginning of his career getting some on-the-job training.

I was doing unoriginal, unfunny jokes, with poor timing (Editor: WAS?). How bad was I? About 3 minutes in, a lady in the room shouted out “why don’t you say something funny?” I proceeded to drop all my material, and verbally attack the lady for my remaining two minutes. The sad part? Those last two minutes got more laughs than anything that I had spent my time writing and refining at that point.

When I got off the stage, I was pretty sure I was leaving the stage for the last time… I clearly didn’t have the chops to do this comedy thing. It was my first bombing, and it was exactly the opposite of my first time on stage, where I felt so elated, I assumed everyone in the audience was doing what they could to prevent themselves from picking me up on their shoulders and parading me around like God’s Gift to Comedy, which I clearly was.

I saw something else that night for the first time, and the only time, in the 10+ years now I’ve been doing comedy. I saw an audience member pick up their chair, and attempt to attack another audience member with it, like a WWE match gone wrong.

I still remember what I said to my friend that brought me there. I said “you said this was going to be a happy place. I feel like you lied to me”. In reality, the show should have been good… It was me that was bad. As for that audience member… well, I hope I didn’t contribute to the chair attack… And I hope they tipped their waitstaff.

-Deric
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Deric Harrington is a comedian from the Albany area. He’s much better now than he was back then. Please only use your chairs for sitting at his shows.

To me, the crappy side of comedy is the business side of it. While there’s nothing quite as awesome as going up on stage and entertaining a bunch of people, to me there’s nothing quite as much of a pain as getting the gigs scheduled whereever you’re trying to work. But that’s not quite the be-all-end-all of it either. The really crappy thing? Let’s take a look at my schedule for this month, one month ago, compared to what it looks like right now…

One month ago, I had shows scheduled on the following dates: 11/9, 11/15-16, 11/23. I purposely left open the weekend after Thanksgiving, and the weekend of the 2/3 (the weekend after thanksgiving because I would likely be out of town with family, and the weekend of the 2/3 as it was likely going to be too soon after the birth of my daughter for me to feel comfortable going away for a full day to travel for a show, where my wife and I were likely to still be adjusting (and seeing how my daughter arrived a week and a half late, it looks like I made a good call there). Regardless, the shows were booked, I was just waiting for the dates to come.

First, the show on 11/23. It was canceled, due to there being another show that the venue determined was too close geographically to theirs, that they felt the audience wouldn’t support both shows… Tough break, but that happens some time when you take a DIY approach to your shows and you end out booking some in the same general area, although I know of comics that have booked shows for two nights in a row, that end out being about 10 miles apart… I just depends on the town and audience. Despite searching out shows for that weekend, I’ve been unable to replace it with anything that’s willing to guarentee some minimum of pay (there’s a lot of “showcase shows” running in the area that have 8-10 comics on it. If you get paid at all for the show, it’s unlikely to be very much due to the volume of comics. I’m not interested in those shows currently, because I’d rather stay home with my wife and daughter and be a good dad, then go out for 5 hours and hopefully have it be worth my time).

Next, it was the show on the 9th. Originally scheduled to be in Greenfield Center, the venue was changed to Saratoga mid-month last month. A couple weeks after that? The show was called off completely. The people running the show there were caterers, and planned to make their money for the night off of running only a “dinner and a show” ticket. When the amount of pre-sales weren’t meeting their hopes, they decided to call off the evening. Strike two for November.

That cancellation sucked particularly hard. My parents are in town that weekend, the first time they would be in NY for over 7 years. I was excited to have them come out and watch the show. Even though that by the time they paid for the dinner and show tickets, overall, our family was only going to net a few bucks. But, I was middling, which provides me a chance to sell merchandise to make some additional revenue. It’s an important item to remember, as selling t-shirts has given me anywhere from gas money, to new video game system money on one show alone.

I reached out to the booker at the Comedy Works to see if there were any spots I could take part in to fill the space where my parents were going to be in town. I ended out getting booked for Thursday-Saturday, 5 shows total (this is where I tell you that you should come out Thursday, 6:30, Friday & Saturday at 7:30 & 9:30). So, my parents have a chance to see me work, and I’m going to make some money for the weekend. Weekend saved. So, I’m working two out of thr…

Wait, what’s that? I got a Facebook message from the person that booked me for the weekend of the 15/16. He’s pulling the plug on that weekend’s shows. UGH! Not a single show for November stayed booked? Here’s the kick in the pants for that weekend: I was working for less than I normally charge, because the wife and I were going to take advantage of the provided hotel in order to get out for an evening. Beyond that, after I accepted the gig, I received three offers for work that weekend. Someone inquired about Friday night, two others about Saturday. I had to turn down all three shows, because I had this other weekend booked. You know how many of those still have openings two weeks out? Zero.

I always used to think people were being dramatic with the “you’re taking food out of my family’s mouth” argument. I get it now. I’ve lost more than 1/2 of my guaranteed pay for the month, not to mention any extra income from the sale of merchandise. Even worse? As the talent (for where there are hundreds of people that want to do the same gigs that I do), even though I’m frustrated over these cancellations, the public face you have to put forward is “ok, not a problem, thank you for letting me know. Please keep me in mind in case anything opens up in the future”.

And that, my friends, is the crappy side of comedy.

Deric
——————————————————Deric Harrington is a comedian from the Albany area. You should totally hire him for your holiday party. Just click his name and send him an email. He doesn’t mind. Think of the baby? That’s right, he’s not ashamed to use his baby to try and get a gig…